@Polk The problem with calling someone like Cujo ‘just emotionally immature’ is that it lets him off the hook for some objectively shitty behavior.

He’s not ‘just immature.’ This is a fifty-ish year old man we’re talking about. He knows it’s not okay to set his staff bit dark and spy on someone. He knows it’s not okay to constantly change the rules for his buddies. He knows it’s not okay to ignore complaints of sexual harassment and general bullying. He knows it’s not okay to purge players and staff who have spoken up.

He’s not emotionally immature. He’s a predator, an enabler, and a poor speller.

A lot of us are more interested in knowing why nothing has been done about the multiple harassment complaints against Hadrix specifically.

We should actively want games that have reached this level of terribleness to die. Because a year or two from now, people who haven’t read this thread will be looking for a Star Wars game, and will stumble upon this cesspool.

Spoiler alert: This is what Cujo and Co are hoping will happen. So it’s important to shine as bright a light as possible on their shittiness, which I think you all did pretty magnificently.

Thank you everyone who came forward with personal stories and corroborating testimony!

The question of ‘What would get all of our player back?’ is probably moot at this point. Cujo has been weighting the entire game heavily in favor of a particular group for years now.

He’s changed the rules multiple times to allow non-Mandalorians to ‘convert’ to ‘real’ Mandalorians, which is how the Kora group started in the first place. Then he changed the rules so nobody else could ever form a group that way.

Clearly, the only players he cares about are the toxic club in Clan Kora. Might as well change the game’s name to Manbros: Age of Kora.

But if there’s any legitimate curiosity from staff about why some of their former players left, we’ve got a whole list of reasons in this thread.

The main grievance though, can really just be gleaned from the thread’s title: What are they going to do about the cultural of sexual pestering and harassment that permeates the game, and what are they going to do about the game’s (arguably) most obnoxious player?

The desperation over there is pretty palpable.

“It’s gonna be real fun guys, I promise! We’re gonna have the Sith control some of the TRADE ROUTES! And there’ll be coded items to buy! You like those!”

I’m paraphrasing only slightly the stuff they are actually saying on the public channels.

I haven’t heard anyone say yet that they’re going to fix their problems with harassment, bullying, and toxic dinosaurs. But I’m sure they’ll get to that after they finish building the lightsaber vendor on Endor.

Every Hadrix pose looks something like this:

‘Hadrix descends from the sky with his very specific brand of jet pack that’s really expensive. He holsters his Modified E-11 after ensuring that nobody present is a threat to him. His Warmaster Armor glitters in the Sun as if it were the only one of its kind on the grid, which it is. Then he walks up to the bar with a feline grace that belies his truly impressive bulk. He stops next to (attractive female) at the bar and says ‘Hello. I’m Hadrix. I’m a Mandalorian.’’

He always seems disappointed when he doesn’t get a big reaction…

@SpilledBeanz Come join us at Manbro Wars: Age of Kora! New coded feature coming this Summer… EVERYONE ELSE STARTS THE GAME AS A SEX SLAVE!

Oh, and also there’s some vaguely Star Wars-like stuff too, if you’re into that.

@TooManyCharacter

It’s true.

Some of the players there are stuck in the mindset of ‘But we’re about to get 500 XP for free! We can’t leave now!’

Little do they know they can get 600 XP by playing Duolingo for like an hour, and they can learn Mandarin.

@Pavel Yeah, sure. And now on AoA only NEW players can be Mandalorians. No existing players can go grab some beskar armor and pestering everyone.

Except that’s not ENTIRELY true. Apparently the posted rule was bent recently to allow Colo Nell to convert despite being past the thirty day ‘new character’ limit listed in the rules.

@Pavel Yeah, the Kora clan was allowed to form a specific way in game, and then that particular ladder was pulled up.

Clan Kora must always be on top, no matter how many times the rules must change.

@DarthSmegma Before anyone brings it up, no I don’t think it’s a good idea to give players in-game karma for helping out with the wiki… that did not work well.

Maybe prestige is a loaded term for people. A whole bunch of games have ‘karma’ which is basically the same thing.

I’ve staffed on games where getting awarded ‘karma’ for things like helping out with the wiki enabled players to do things like app restricted characters.

Sometimes ‘karma’ is tied to the number of votes players get, especially on games that have no XP at all, like superhero games.

Nobody is actually suggesting better ways to handle the acquisition of experience points, coded objects, and in-game assignments involving responsibilities (like running a faction.) This is what the original post was asking for.

It’s super easy to poke holes in a suggestion. What are the BETTER ways to handle these things?

@pavel Sure, if that was my entire suggestion. I’m not sure people are reading the entire post. Should have made it shorter.

The suggestion is to handle XP rewards, item rewards, and ‘prestige’ rewards via separate avenues to reward different types of players in meaningful ways.

If Player A just logs on every day but does nothing else, at the end of the year Player A will have 364 XP, but no cool job title and only starter gear.

If Player B logs on twice a week, but runs an event once a month and does Bar RP every now and then, at the end of the year Player B will have less XP than Player A, but Player B’s character would have much better gear and a much better ‘in game’ position, which means Player B would probably win in a fight if coded items are being used (which I imagine they are, as this is someone who is used to AoA’s system.) It also means that Player B would be first in line for positions of IC responsibility, rather than just having staff appoint whoever they like best to run factions.

This isn’t a ‘terrible’ idea, and it would work great with the sort of system that is probably being proposed here, which obviously involves conjecture on my part. ‘Winning’ will probably involve a combination of skills, attributes, and coded gear. There will probably be ‘fiefdoms’ of some sort to run.

This incentivizes logging on AND doing scenes AND being friendly AND logging quality scenes to the wiki, all of which are desirable player behavior.

@Pavel Guess my ideas are terrible and farcical then.

@Pavel I don’t log on every day either. Who cares? It’s 1 XP. Log on when you want.

What’s the alternative? Just giving out XP once a week to everyone whether they logged on or not?

Circling back around to some of the original questions here, I have a couple of suggestions for the actual implementation of Experience Points and character advancement.

1: Give out set XP rewards DAILY rather than weekly if possible. It’s not a panacea but it obviously would incentivize daily log ins better than a weekly system would. For instance, every day that you log on, you get 1 XP rather than getting 7 XP per week.

2: Give no XP rewards for +noms, @votes, or whatever. Instead…

3: Give out IN-GAME CURRENCY for +noms, @votes, or whatever. This might literally be ‘currency’ in its simplest form. Or more interestingly, some sort of ‘prestige system.’ For example, a character with 1000 votes is ‘more famous’ or a ‘bigger deal’ than a character with 10 votes. This makes for an objective way to choose which character gets to be Mayor of Shinytown, or Head of the Cat School, or Chief of the Lodge of Sorceresses, or Most Famous Bard in Skellige, etc.

4: Give some sort of gear tokens out MANUALLY, for providing logs to the wiki. Staff can determine what criteria to use, perhaps rewarding events with more gear tokens than one on one RP, or Bar RP.

5: Allow players to trade in their ‘gear tokens’ for specialized gear, rather than forcing them to purchase things from randomized coded vendors.

So, all taken together, players would advance their sheets via automatic Daily XP, they would advance their ‘prestige’ through votes in RP, and they’d get some sort of ‘gear tokens’ from logged events which they could use for character-specific gear, or whatever else there is to purchase in your system.

In the Witcher games, ‘leveling up’ isn’t just about gaining new levels, it’s also about acquiring mutagens, learning new potion formulas, and finding/buying better swords and armor. When you add in a bunch of more conventional D&D-sequence classes on top of this to allow for Elven Mages, Dwarven Merchants, and Halfling Berserkers, it’ll be tough to make a list of precoded items that will fit everyone. Better to use a mix of precoded items for ‘starter gear’ and bespoke item creation to celebrate character milestones.

@SqeakyClean Shows what I know. Excuse me while I clean up this unrelated pile of vomit.

@Warlander This is still super paltry though, when you think about it.

For players unfamiliar with Age of Kora, XP is earned via +noms. For each nom you receive you get three XP, and for each nom you give you get one XP. So FOUR XP per ‘interaction with a player.’

1500 divided by four, means you get the equivalent of 375 votes over FIFTEEN YEARS. This translates to less than a single nom every two weeks.

And that’s just the XP. The average Smuggler makes something like 10,000 credits per week. Over fifteen years that should be 7,800,000 credits, not including compound interest from putting it in a bank account.

Of course, most players on AoK spend two to four hours EVERY day playing the boring coded freight mini game for 5000-6500 credits per day. So over 15 years, the AVERAGE player would earn 43,290,000 credits. And about 15,600 XP.

The staff just imperiously announced ‘We’re skipping ahead fifteen years so that Rey and Ben Solo can have lots of babies! If you don’t like it, leave!’

And now lots of people are, for one reason or another.

@Polk The problem with calling someone like Cujo ‘just emotionally immature’ is that it lets him off the hook for some objectively shitty behavior.

He’s not ‘just immature.’ This is a fifty-ish year old man we’re talking about. He knows it’s not okay to set his staff bit dark and spy on someone. He knows it’s not okay to constantly change the rules for his buddies. He knows it’s not okay to ignore complaints of sexual harassment and general bullying. He knows it’s not okay to purge players and staff who have spoken up.

He’s not emotionally immature. He’s a predator, an enabler, and a poor speller.

@TooManyCharacter Maybe if you learn French?